Sentiment
by RennFlight
Summary: The Black Widow has no time for sentiment.


_Sentiment_

Months have gone by, and Stark still hasn't said a word about replacing the other letters on that fancy building of his. It just says "A" and the other Avengers find themselves fancying that maybe, just maybe, it's for them.

Natasha doesn't have time for sentiment.

.o.O.o.

New York was torn down around their ears and even now, months later, they're just so slowly building it back up, brick by stupid brick. Iron Man, Captain America and Thor all like to show their muscles, and as a part of his punishment, Loki spends his weekends magically lifting rubble and vanishing broken, rotting bodies.

He almost seems at home in the dying light with all those lonely dead.

.o.O.o.

She visits him, one evening, in the twilight. "He needs someone to be there with him, to guard him from misfortune or temptation," Thor said in that gravelly voice of his.

"He needs a babysitter, that's what he needs," Stark was, as per usually, using scornful snark like his life depended on it. The Russian Black Widow merely pinched the bridge of her nose as she sighed before nodding wearily.

She perches on a large, upended cement block as he silently raises his arms, simple black robes flapping around his ankles in a wind that touches no one else. Emerald sparks fly before the decomposing flesh of a space-whale disappears. It's actually quite impressive, and Loki turns to his unwilling companion, smirk half-formed on thin lips, but Natasha's expression is impassive. The Trickster quirks an eyebrow at her before shrugging and going back to work.

Despite the blank mask she wears, she can't help the way her eyes start to trace his lithe form after that, or the way her heart stutters at that smile, or how she has to fake a sigh when asked to watch over him.

.o.O.o.

Once all the repairs have been made, there is no reason for a prisoner of Asgard to be on Earth. One master assassin finds herself scoffing at the notion that she might miss the easy silence the unlikely pair had started to develop.

It's harder to lie to herself when the boys are being rowdy as they drink themselves senseless.

.o.O.o.

The first time he appears in her living room, her immediate response is to train a gun at him, barrel point-blank at his forehead. "Now, now, Tash, how's that any way to greet a friend?" His voice is slick, like honey poured over oil, and it drips from his silver-tongue far too easily for the spy's liking.

"You're not my friend," she asserts defiantly despite her traitorous thoughts (_is "silver-tongue" a name given just for lies?_ She wonders), refusing to lower her defenses.

He clucks that tongue against the roof of his mouth before fading like so much smoke –

– and Natasha only realizes that he has crept up behind her when his lips are pressed against the pale, succulent flesh of her neck.

.o.O.o.

Their first time is tender, so unlike what she had expected from such a violent man. Still, she quickly finds herself calling out his name in the soft silence of her apartment, and she finds that his responding grin, glittering white in the darkness above her, is far more of a turn on than it ought to have been.

.o.O.o.

Their next time isn't so sweet or slow. It's rough and jerky, a release of pleasure and pain, just fast and hard collisions of flesh.

.o.O.o.

Once, seated at a table set for two, he reached for her hand. She skittered away, red curls flying, features sharpening. "Get out," she hissed, and like that he was gone. Like he was never there at all.

.o.O.o.

Clint asks her out to dinner, and she says yes. He seems nervous, in a rented suit, and though Natasha Romanov has long since learned to be comfortable no matter what she wears, this black cocktail dress makes her want to fall out of her own skin.

That night, she lets Loki back into her bedroom and as he fills her with all of himself, she rakes red-painted nails across his back.

.o.O.o.

He whispers in her ear at night, as she fits herself perfectly beside him and he drapes an arm around her, pale fingers splayed on the bare flesh of her abdomen. He tells her about the starry skies he wandered before falling to Earth, about his family's betrayal, about rage and fire and sorrow. Sometimes his voice grows rough and his hands clench tight enough to bruise and sometimes his voice is like sweet poison, low and silky, but he never talks of happy childhood days spent with family or friends.

Loki has no space in that dark heart for sentiment.

.o.O.o.

At some point, as Natasha slips out the window from the velvety warmth of their room (_when did it stop being __hers__?_) to land silently on the metal grate of the fire escape and creep up to the roof, she realizes that her favorite sound in the world is Loki's voice when he lies.

.o.O.o.

When she reaches the roof, gravel crunching quietly beneath her bare feet and prickling sharply at her soles, she heads straight for the edge. With her arms dangling limply at her sides, she wonders how permanent the destination would be if she jumped.

His arms wrap around her, locking around her stomach, and she sighs softly as she falls into his chest. She can hear his heart, beating out a steady rhythm, as he cranes down to kiss her neck, like he did so very long ago on their first night.

With a sudden rush of self-loathing, Natasha forcefully pushes away from the God of Mischief's grasp. She tumbles over the edge, diving through the air, and she does not scream. Instead she smiles and wills the pavement, as it races toward her, to move faster. She wants her brains bashed out against that stone. She wants her blood to seep around her broken body. She wants this tainted life – and the putrid, foul life growing inside her – to be over, _now_.

She doesn't want the Avengers to watch the swell of her stomach, doesn't want them to know whose child grew inside of her.

She doesn't want to see the sun rise over this corrupt union.

.o.O.o.

He catches her anyway.

.o.O.o.

The Black Widow screams curses at him as soon as her feet pass over the roof's ledge. She throws herself at him, not cold and controlled logic like she was trained to be in a fight, but instead a storm of fury, raining blows with clenched fists as tears stream down her face. Loki bides his time, his expression strangely gentle, but she doesn't notice, her vision so blurred.

She eventually breaks down, sobbing, and collapses at his feet. Once he had wanted the whole world to kneel there, but now he merely joins her in the dust and holds her tight while she shakes.

.o.O.o.

They (the Avengers, Odin, Asgard, SHIELD, whatever) find out about Loki's secret visits to Earth. They couldn't figure out why, but no matter how desperately Thor pleaded for his brother's life, Loki had broken their deal and thus his life was forfeit.

.o.O.o.

He swaggers to the chopping block. He whispered to her, once, that a true sorcerer ought to be tied to the rocks and swallowed by the sea, but if Odin ever were to execute him, it would be to the quick mercy of an axe. To beheading. Loki had sneered, said he didn't want pity, and then he had taken Natasha hard before she'd had time to say a word.

Still, he'll take what small mercies he has been given. He has learned in this life that nothing is easy and that best thing you can do is to weather it out. To bear what horrors you must and avoid the ones you can.

Natasha won't learn that for a while yet.

.o.O.o.

She stands at the edge of the crowd, near the stone steps. They say she'll be splattered in blood, that she should get back. Clint wants to shield her from that, but he of all people should know that the Black Widow is no shrinking violet, no mewling damsel in distress.

.o.O.o.

His blood paints her pale skin with freckles of red. She doesn't falter, and her gaze never leaves his, even as his head tumbles from its shoulders. It rolls down the platform to land with a sick thud at her feet.

.o.O.o.

Natasha goes to work the next day, pretends that last night her child wasn't ripped from her womb, that her lover didn't smile with cold dead lips from his place on the dusty, bloodied ground.

She has no time for sentiment.


End file.
